Thursday, September 30, 2010

Don't You Wonder?

I was standing in line today for a free lunch – provided by the building where I'm currently working, not a soup kitchen – and listening to the conversations around me. Very little work discussion going on, but quite a bit about how slow the line was moving and whether someone should queue up for chicken, a burger, or a hot dog. Or for all three.
   From time to time I glanced at the clouds, which were odd-looking for Los Angeles, especially this time of year. We've been having freaky weather lately. But I noticed that not many other people were noticing the clouds. No one, in fact, seemed to be looking up. Very few people looked out at the street, even, mostly they just watched the guys cooking the food. Which got me to wondering.
   What do other people see?
   I know what I see, obviously, and I know what I tend to notice. But is that what others see and notice? Probably not. Or obviously not, since nobody else seemed to be watching the clouds. But even deeper than that, if you and I look at the same thing, do we actually see the same thing?
   I don't mean if I see a fire hydrant you might see a bouquet of flowers, I mean if I see a red fire hydrant, how is the quality of red I see different than what you see? Assuming neither of us is colorblind or impaired in any fashion, how is the red fire hydrant you see different than mine?
   I know these are experiential philosophical questions people have pondered for a long time, but I am intrigued. Most of human strife is caused by misunderstandings that could be prevented if the two sides only understood one another. Take Robert McNamara's comments on the Vietnam War, for example. Part of understanding someone is trying to walk a mile in their shoes, as it were, trying to see things the way they do. This doesn't mean that the other person has a proper perception and you don't, it just means that when you understand where someone is coming from it's much easier to find common ground.
   What I want to know, though, is what was the guy with neon yellow tennis shoes thinking? Seriously, when is something like that ever a good idea?

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Another One Bites The Dust

A good friend of mine moved from Los Angeles today. She got a job in Santa Barbara, just up the 101, because jobs are few and far between here in LA. Last week we had a farewell lunch at Canter's Deli, partly because it was close to my job and her house, and partly because it's a very LA kind of place, a local landmark, which makes it appropriate for that occasion. We're both kind of* disillusioned with corporate life and looking for something different, even though we're locked into the paycheck economy along with most of the rest of America.
   Today was her moving day, and I called her at lunch to say good-bye and wish her luck and all the things that you're supposed to do when a friend leaves and you're not certain you're ever going to see them again. And I got a little weepy. Afterwards, I mean, when I hung up. Marna was one of the first friends I made out here, I've known her in all her peregrinations, from Venice to Pasadena to West Hollywood to another part of West Hollywood. Her dog Tex was the calm Buddha center of her universe for two years, and now he's gone and just a few weeks later she's gone. Jeez… I'm tearing up a little bit just writing this now.
   Endings are hard. I've had a lot of endings in the past year and a half, and I'm getting pretty damn sick of it. I know change is inevitable, and for the most part change is good, but that doesn't make it easier to take. I'm tired of the introspection needed to process change, I'm tired of the emotional toll it takes, I'm tired of thinking I'm doing okay only to find that with the slightest provocation I'm really just a raw nerve after all.
   But most of all I'm tired of saying good-bye to family, friends and beloved pets.
   So I'm calling off change. You heard me, no more change unless you get written permission from me beforehand. If you want to move away you have to run it by me, and I may not approve the request. If you're thinking about growing up and moving on, think again. If you're considering a change in careers I'll probably sign off on that, as long as it doesn't involve you moving to Alaska or something. And if you're for some reason thinking about dying, then you just put those plans on hold, no one's going to be taking the Big Sleep any more, not without my say-so.

Got it? Good…


* by 'kind of' I mean 'extremely'

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Hard-Boiled Gumshoe Walks Into A Bar

Hey there, pal, nice hat.
    It helps me deal with the sinister echoes of footsteps trailing me in a pitch-dark alley.
Sure, okay.
    You got no idea what it's like being me, walking the fine line between justice and depravity every day. Catching the glint of blued steel out of the corner of my eye.
Well, I am a bartender...
    I've seen the worst humanity has to offer, my friend, right here in the naked city. Makes it so a man can hardly sleep at night. Tell Pat his old buddy Jake Derringer is back.
Pat's been dead for forty years. I'm Harvey.
    You wouldn't kid a kidder? Pat's dead?
Yup.
   Forty years?
Uh-huh.
   Jeez... I knew I went on kind of a bender there after Trixie gave me the heave-ho, but I had no idea... This isn't 1956?
Not even close. 2010.
    Really? Tell me you got flying cars.
Not a one.
    Jet packs? Monorails? Dirigibles?
Don't even have death rays. TV's in color, though. See? Over the pool table?
    Big deal, so we get to see Sid Caesar as pasty as he is in real life. The future ain't what it was cracked up to be.
Kind of a let down to me too. We did beat Communism, though.
   Oooh... big fight? Planes, tanks, hydrogen bombs, all that?
No, they kind of did it themselves. Just closed up shop one day. And we've lost every war we've been in since you crawled inside the bottle. Except for Grenada.
   Damn. Makes me sad I ever sobered up, even for a little while. Got any matches back there, barkeep?
Sorry, there's no smoking in here.
   You gotta be kidding me.
City ordinance.
    But it's a freakin' bar...
I know. And trust me, you're not the first to complain. You can light up out on the terrace.
    There's a terrace? Dear God in Heaven and all the saints too. What has happened to my country? I start drinking in a man's USA back in 1956, and I wake up in nancy-ville 2010.
Got some century-old absinthe in back if you want to get blotto for the next year or so.
    Yeah. Set me up, Harvey.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Mullet? What Mullet?

Just when you think people have come to their senses...
   I was in the local Whole Foods this afternoon, because it's stupid hot in LA and for an environmentally-conscious health food emporium they certainly do keep that place cold. I was buying some produce and on-sale yogurt* when I saw them. You've seen them too, more than likely, perhaps you ARE them.
   The tattooed couple.
   A man and a woman, both inked to within an inch of hepatitis, dressed like they'd slept in the van in the same clothes for a week. Which perhaps they had. Still and all, they were in Whole Foods right beside the pretentious yuppie moms and their poorly-behaved kids, the senior citizens marveling at the $2 cucumbers, and people like me trying to get out of the heat and pretending to be shopping.
   The tattooed couple was getting a few sidelong glances, and a few stares from the little kids too young to know they weren't supposed to be staring. They had dramatic ink, certainly, and lots of metal studs and dirty denim, but what really caught my eye was the woman's mullet. More of a mullet-hawk, really, buzzcut on the sides - and brown - and short and blonde in front, very long and blonde in the back. With a barette right in the middle.
   I thought mullets were the stuff of twenty years back, Billy Ray Cyrus and all, and only worn now in rural areas, and even then only by men who really couldn't be expected to know better. But to see one on a woman in the middle of Pasadena... I think she was a foreigner. Or someone who works below the line, those folks have some special neuroses.
   I was so startled I forgot to notice the tattoos. Usually you can get a Bettie Page homage, or a Led Zeppelin Icarus thing. And skulls, there's always a skull. You know, you'd think for something that's supposed to be as individual as a tattoo people would get something different once in a while.


* 69 cents for an 8 oz. cup! You can't beat that!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Baked Los Angeles

You've heard of baked Alaska, right? Ice cream and cake with meringue heated in the oven.
   Well, today Los Angeles is the oven. The Santa Ana winds have returned with a vengeance, blowing hot and dry and making everything dusty and miserable. It shouldn't be this hot, really. It's dangerous, LA people don't know what to do when it's this hot. I saw a guy out jogging just a few minutes ago. Seriously, with a beet red face and everything, for sure he had heat exhaustion, getting close to heat stroke. Good thing he was by the hospital, so the EMTs can find him when he finally collapses.
   I have previously written an ode to the rainy streets of Los Angeles, but this particular bout of extreme weather has but me in a different mood. More Eastern. And so I've composed several haikus about this day. This terrible, awful day.


Hot wind sears us all
Like an oven with no door
Breathing is bad news

Don't grab the car door
Molten metal will burn fingers
No one likes cussing

Truck with no AC
Pure torture for the driver
Fun for those watching

Man begging for change
With a sign at the off-ramp
Bad sunburn for him

   Wow... how Japanese of me... now I feel like putting on some pajamas and having a cup of green tea at a low table.

Friday, September 24, 2010

In The Presence Of Greatness

Every so often you look up and realize how lucky you are to have encountered certain people. This happens to me from time to time and I try to take note of it. Just last night I had that realization about my fencing instructor, Gennady Klimanov. Or at least I was reminded of it.
   Just to be clear, I knew he was a champion - there is a picture of him hanging in the fencing salle as he received his gold medal at the Soviet championship in 1963 - and I knew he had far more experience than I could ever get, seeing as how he started fencing when he was four. If I live to be 100 or so and keep fencing the whole time I'll have that kind of record. But I didn't really appreciate the level of professionalism and expertise I benefited from until last night, when Gennady brought a few of his awards.
   I knew he held a Master of Sport of the USSR* in Modern Pentathlon, the sport he won the gold medal for in 1963. Modern Pentalthon is the five-sport 'soldier's competition' consisting of riding (a horse), swimming, running, shooting, and fencing. So, yeah, he's kind of a bad-ass just for those two things alone. But there's more. Until last night I did not know he also holds a Master of Sport in Fencing.
   See, competitors in Pentathlon use an epee, one of the three weapons in modern fencing. And the Pentathlon fencing competitions are one-touch only. If you get touched - just once - that bout is done. And every Pentathlete fences every other one. So for Gennady to have won the epee part of the Pentathlon in 1963 (he also won the whole competition) he had to have fenced sixty or seventy equally-skilled fencers and beaten them. More serious bad-ass-ness. But to be a Master of Sports in fencing means he has to be an expert in all three weapons, epee, foil, and sabre. That's just above and beyond, especially when you consider the fact that sabre fencers are all certifiably insane. It's true, look it up.
   Last night I came home, sat down, and considered the quality of the fencing instruction I have received for the past six years or so, and realized exactly how lucky I am to learn from someone like Gennady. If I were a religious man I'd say 'blessed,' but I'm not so I'll stick with lucky.
   I urge everybody to take a moment and think about someone you're lucky to know, your own Gennady. Maybe you should thank them. I know I should.

* this means he was a Soviet national champion. Really.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Okay, Maybe One Thing...

I wasn't going to post today, but then I sat down for a morning of The Price Is Right.

WTF? It's all different!

Drew Carey's lost about a million pounds - his head is bigger than his neck now - and he's not wearing the black-rimmed glasses. And Rich Fields is gone, replaced by some dude whose voice I don't like.
   This does explains why Rich Fields showed up on Channel Two as the weather guy, though...

Do you see what happens when I go to work? The world falls apart. So, obviously, in order to keep the planets in line and gravity still working the way it should, I shouldn't go to work. That's the only conclusion I can come up with.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Today's my birthday, and I don't feel like doin' nothin'.

So talk amongst yourselves, I'll be back tomorrow.


... what's on TV in the middle of the day?

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Tales From My Past – Too Seriously

Years ago I was a waiter at the Olive Garden. Chiefly because I could walk there from my parents' house, where I moved after college. I didn't have a car, which was why walking was important. That was a fun time, technically an adult but still living at home – and paying rent, mind you – with nothing but free time to my day. I worked as a cook too, which gave me some skills other than writing and walking and carrying heavy trays. The restaurant had many, many different kinds of people, from carefree sorts like me, to ex-cons, to people very serious about the quality of their pot, to people just passing through, to single mothers. All sorts mingling under one roof, and it all just kind of worked.
   Until one day…
   If you've never held a job as a waiter, you should know that many restaurants require their waiters to do sidework. Rolling silverware into napkins, for instance, or cutting lemons for iced tea, or re-stocking desserts in the refrigerator, that kind of thing. Usually the sidework is something that benefits all the waitstaff so there's peer pressure to get it done.
   There was one particular girl – I think her name was Bree – a complete Daddy's girl, a spoiled princess working there over the summer, and generally a worthless waiter who got by on her looks and a truly epic rack. I mean it was GREAT, worth writing home about. She was the absolute worst at sidework, though, almost refused to do it, and if she had to do something vital like refilling the salad station you could guarantee your tips would suffer because of her.
   One day as the shift was winding down and half of us were cleaning our tables and getting ready to leave for the day, Bree was having lunch. Which she probably didn't pay for. One of the waiters still working came out and fussed at her for not doing her sidework. She blew him off with a laugh. Then I told her she was screwing all of us up when she didn't do what she was supposed to. She tried to ignore me. Then some of the other waiters laid into her, and she started to get upset.
   "Some people just take this job too seriously," she snapped. She said this in front of Evelyn, a single mother who supported her two kids on what she made as a waitress. If anybody was entitled to take that job too seriously it was Evelyn. Or Tess. Or Joyce. Or Roxy. All mothers who worked long, thankless hours at a low-paying job just to do right by their kids.
   As luck or karma would have it, right then our best manager happened by and overheard. Josephe took Bree into a vacant section, sat her down, and had a 'discussion' with her. Josephe's discussions usually ended up with someone weeping – never himself – and this time was no exception. Bree left the restaurant in tears, her half-eaten lunch still on the table.
   But the next day she finished her sidework.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

You Know What Would Be Cool?

Do you know what would be cool?
   If somebody made ice cream that was chock-full of vitamins. And I mean for real, like it was the most vitamin-enriched thing you could possibly buy. More vitamins than those really nasty vegetables that are totally good for you but are completely gross, like kale or chard or rhubarb.
   And then those guys who are on the daytime talk shows telling people what not to eat would have some sort of aneurysm when they read the nutrition label. Because, after all, it would still be ice cream - which is just sweet fat - but it would also be better for you than a multi-vitamin. It would BE a multi-vitamin, just with a ribbon of silky fudge in the center.
   Ice cream companies would piss themselves trying to come up with the latest and greatest 'healthy' ice cream. No doubt there would be segmentation, with senior-marketed ice cream competing with infant and toddler-marketed ice cream, each with its own specialized vitamin ingredients. And then the inevitable diet books would follow, advocating one brand of vitamin ice cream over another. In the meantime registered dietitians and nutritionists would be screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to get people to realize that it's still ice cream, after all, and totally bad for you no matter how many vitamins you shove into it.
   It would be madness, conflicting opinions, people convinced beyond any convincing otherwise that they were right and there was no other answer. No one listening to each other, just a lot of noise and people yelling to people who already agree with them. It would be like our current political climate, only with ice cream.
   Ah... sweet anarchy...

They're Following Me

Just the other day I posted about an odd Saturday night where I saw many men with casts on their hands.

I just saw another one in the lobby of this office building.

They're following me.

And remember - it's not being paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Monday, September 20, 2010

My Brain Is Not Flying

You ever have one of those days where your mind is just vibrating with thoughts, random notions firing left, right and center, all kinds of new things filling your brain and pushing each other around until you just can't stand it and you have to take a moment and write it all down?
   I haven't. Not for a while now, anyway.
   I'm not sure what the deal is – I'm blaming work but it could be almost anything – but I haven't had a good brainstorming day in a very long time. And it's kind of pissing me off.
   Used to be I would get vapor-locked from time to time, where the ideas I knew were up in my gray matter wouldn't make their way down to my fingers so I could write them down or type them out. I don't believe in writer's block, but I do believe that you can get so wrapped around the axle and concerned about other things that you kind of forget how to remember, if that make any sense. Usually when that sort of thing happened to me I would go do yard work, or take a walk, or something else physical and mindless, to unlatch my brain from whatever was holding it down and let it soar free.
   Without fail I would be trudging behind the lawn mower or swimming laps in the pool and I could almost hear the 'pop' as whatever was blocking the flow dislodged. Then I'd have a different problem, trying to remember all these new things when there was nothing nearby to write with or to write on. Still, I'd gotten my creativity back to where it needed to be.
   My brain's not flying lately. Not that I'm doing bad work – I think I'm probably a better writer at this moment than ever – but with long experience has come a routine. I get in my hour or two a day with more on the weekends, write and revise, and keep the creative process going. But I don't have leaps any longer, no frantic flashes of brilliant inspiration or hours-long marathons of pencil-breaking creativity. I think I manage the creative process better, but I also manage it without passion.
   I gotta fix that.
   I need to unleash my brain again, to let it run wild and wherever it wants with me clinging to it like a terrified rider, wondering where and when the mad dash is going to be over and hoping I don't get hurt in the process. Or maybe hoping I do, whatever brings better results.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Odd Coincidence Or Sinister Gathering?

I drove down to the OC last night to see my older niece's soccer game. Her school - Mills College - had come down to play Soka University, and since I'm in the neighborhood I wanted to show my support.
   Game results: Mills lost 0-3, but not for lack of trying. Some good players, lots of good ball-handling but a few bad breaks. And I got to spend some quality time with my niece, one of the few players who had family close enough to show up. It was a good time and I'm glad I went.
   HOWEVER... you ever have one of those times where you see something and then you see a lot of that same something over and over again? Like maybe you see an ad for mousetraps (which aren't really advertised all that much) and then over the next few days you see lots of mousetraps in places you wouldn't usually see them?
   Yesterday it was men with casts on their arms. I saw the first one when I was walking from the parking lot to the game, a guy who was probably a student at the school with his arm in a sling. Too bad for him, I thought.
   Then as I was sitting in the metal bleachers I saw another man, a player's parent, with his arm in a cast and two fingers immobilized. An odd coincidence, I thought, and kind of amusing.
   Then during the second half I saw another man, probably another player's parent, with TWO casts, one on each arm. Now I was getting suspicious, and I started looking around for the hidden cameras, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to punk me (does he still do that, or is that reference old and tired now?).
   After the game there were snacks - it was one of the girl's birthday - and I took my leave of my niece and her soccer team. I pulled into a Chevron there in Aliso Viejo, still mildly amused/ concerned about the excessive cast-wearing I'd seen. I filled the truck with gasoline and as I was ready to leave I saw little red sports car pulled over by two AV police officers. I watched from my truck as the officers approached the driver, and then I noticed cast on the driver's arm.
   I escaped the Chevron as fast as I dared and sped back to Pasadena. I didn't know what the hell was going on the OC with men and casts on their arms, and I didn't want to join them.
   Seriously freaky.

Friday, September 17, 2010

The Earl of Sandwich

Who doesn't love a good sandwich?
   Well, people who have wheat allergies, I suppose, but other than them people the world over adore sandwiches. There's just something about two pieces of bread with stuff in between that quiets a restive soul. I could wax rhapsodic about the sandwiches I've consumed over the years, with their pillowy bread and tangy mayo, zesty mustard and sharp cheese, succulent tomatoes and wonderfully salty oh-so-processed lunch meat, cut into triangles like equilateral slices of heaven...
   Ah, sandwiches. I've had good, I've had not so good, and I've had downright terrible. The difference, I've found, is love. And I don't mean that to be sarcastic - I understand that sometimes I can come off that way, totally unintentional* - love really is the difference. Not necessarily the love of the sandwich preparer for me (though Mom sandwiches are the best), but the love the preparer has for the ingredients, for the process, for the Aristotelian essence of Sandwich.
   Why is it, for instance, that you can go into a Subway on a Tuesday and get a half-assed thrown-together mess that barely passes for lunch, but you can go into the exact same store on a Thursday and get a sublime, delicious meal that makes you happy you wandered by right when you were hungry? The ingredients are the same, the store is the same, you're the same, the only thing that's changed is the person behind the counter. The best and worst sandwiches I ever had were at the same Subway. One was a haphazard, borderline-inedible pile of garbage, the other was an almost picture-perfect pleasure to consume. The guy who made the good sandwich didn't take longer, or use better ingredients, or slip me $100 to say this, that guy took pride in what he did and had a love for making food that showed in the work he produced. The other girl would clearly have been happier working anywhere else.
   A friend of mine gave me the title of a sandwich cookbook about a year ago, and I've had the proposal for the book sitting half-done in my computer for a while now. I think it's time to dust it off and put out a cookbook that's also a personal philosophy. Anybody interested in buying the first copy?


* okay, that was sarcasm

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

World War II Was Just Yesterday

An old lady gave me a gift today.
   I was flying back from San Antonio and we were seated next to each other. We said hello when I sat down, and then I got to work revising one of my books. About an hour or so into the almost-three-hour flight she started making conversation, asking me how I could read the small type I use to conserve paper when I print things out to edit. We got to talking and I could tell she was originally from somewhere else, so I asked. Belgium, though she'd been in Texas for sixty-five years, far longer than she'd ever lived where she was born. She's 88 now.
   We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from the Cowboys (she's despairing) to maximum tax rates to how she doesn't remember words in Flemish to Hawaii (her destination) to how her departed husband was vertically integrated into the West Texas cotton business. I even found out that she lived in Sherman, TX for a while, which is where I went to school (go Roos!).
   As the plane was making its approach into Burbank, somehow the conversation turned to her brother. Her voice got very quiet as she said 'the Germans got him. For two years we didn't know where he was, then we found out he was in an Unknown grave in Holland.'
   She was right back there, aged fifteen when the Nazis invaded Belgium and they took her brother to work as slave labor since all the German boys were fighting. She told me how the Gestapo came to their house and told her brother he'd better be on the train Monday, or they would come back for the rest of the family. So he went. And he died.
   Her tears were fresh and real and I could see the fear and outrage and terror in this 88-year-old woman's eyes as if she were seeing the Nazi men in black in front of her at that very moment. It was a humbling experience, and suddenly I understood why she would have left Belgium 65 years ago and never looked back.
   We had discussed my writing - it's how the conversation started - and as she dabbed at her tears she told me 'you should write about that. It's something you never forget.'
   I gave her one of my old cards, back from when I worked at Countrywide, with my cell number and a brief reminder of where we'd met. I want to get her story, even though I know it will cause her pain. And I think she wants to tell it, even though it will cause her pain. These things need to be recorded and people need to remember how inhumane human beings can get.

Cop Ettiquette

I have a travel day today, so I'll be busy watching someone who's never flown before get a cavity search from the TSA because they set off the metal detector one too many times. It is a spectator sport, you know. But I leave you with this puzzler:
   If you're sitting behind a cop at a stop sign and he's obviously busy with folders and paperwork in his car and not paying attention, should you honk at him? It's not illegal - as far as I know - but it seems like an ill-advised move. You don't want to give a cop an excuse to notice you, after all. But then again, if he's in your way and oblivious to the flow of traffic... I don't know.

Enjoy your day, I'll be on a plane.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Horrible Cat

God help me, I'm warming up to my mother's horrible cat.
   A few years after we had to bid our family dog a graceful exit my sister found my mother a new pet. A cute little gray furball kitty, who was born with a gimpy right front foot. Like Nemo but in cat form. His mother had her litter under a boxwood hedge, and they found the kittens once the braver ones started venturing out into the world. My sister had the best of intentions and imagined that the little kitty would be a good addition to a grandparents' household.
   She was right and she was wrong.
   My parents named the cat Smokey, because he was dark gray like smoke from a forest fire. And he was a little bastard. Halfway feral because he'd spent the first six weeks of his life under a bush, and kind of pissed off because he only had 3 1/2 feet, he was anything but cute and loving. He knew he was a cat, and more to the point, he knew you were not.
   My father let the little SOB bite him on the feet. He thought it was cute. It was not. All it did was give Smokey permission to be ornery and awful. You wouldn't think he could do too much damage seeing as how he lacked a right foot, but the little bastard drew blood all the time.
   Make no mistake, I hated that cat, and my sister did too. Her daughters learned that this particular pet animal was a 'no-touch kitty' and he learned that the very last thing you wanted to do was get between my sister and her children. Instant cat-skin cap, if you catch my meaning. For years he's been just one good scratch and bite away from finding a new home 100 miles away on some rancher's property.
   The past few days, though, I've been in my mother's house with this little SOB, and I don't hate him, not any longer. He's getting up there in cat years, and he's had the crap kicked out of him by other neighborhood cats more times than anyone can count, so he's kind of earned my grudging respect, if for nothing else then for lasting as long as he has. He's slower, obviously arthritic, more tentative when jumping up and going down, and less inclined to savage someone who's just trying to pet him.
   He has tried to get my attention with his version of a meow, which is so pathetic and weak and obviously non-practiced that it is cute, in a sorry, scarred, one-bad-foot sort of way. Every day I've been here I've taken leave of my senses and let him out when he squeaks and given him cat treats when he come in. And despite his moods and bites and irrationally vicious nature, my mother does seem to love him. You gotta respect that.
   So here's to you, Smokey, for lasting as long as you have when you've been at such a disadvantage in relation to other wildlife, and for ingratiating yourself to my parents even though you are - seriously - the worst pet animal I've ever known. Unlike the past... oh, entirety of your tenure on this planet... I wish you well, good luck and long life. L'chaim, skoal, here's to you kid, and every other applicable toast. You beat the odds.

Monday, September 13, 2010

That's Sweaty Work

It's been a while since I've lived in South Texas. Eight years, almost nine. And while I do miss the Lone Star State, I have acclimated to SoCal. More than I thought.
   Yesterday I was out in my mother's back yard, just doing a little light yard work picking up branches that had blown out of her trees during a big storm system a week or so ago. There are branches down all over her neighborhood, it's not unique to her place. I was just bending down and standing up again, nothing big, and pulling a few stuck branches out of the crooks of the tree.
   Man, sweat soaked through my shirt after about five minutes.
   Seriously, it was drippping off my eyebrows and onto my glasses, from my forearms onto my pants, and from the tip of my nose onto the cat. Okay, that last one I kind of planned out, but you get the idea. I was drenched in sweat and I wasn't even doing anything. I don't sweat like this in SoCal even when I'm working my hardest at the gym. Crazy...
   Maybe next time I come back to Texas I need to bring some talcum powder.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Lone Star Bound

I'm getting on a plane for San Antonio this afternoon, so I may not be posting as frequently for the next few days.

Although... the airport is usually a target-rich environment. Especially DFW. I wonder how many pairs of red sneakers I'm going to see today?

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Lunchroom Ettiquette

I'm not usually one to get my dander up about things (HA!), but sometimes it's good to vent. We're in this together, you know. We share space on this planet, in this nation, in this city, in this office building. In this lunchroom. The lunchroom everyone on this floor uses. Where the refrigerators are. And the microwaves. Where you heat up your vile, malodorous lunches full of things that any reasonable person might think deserved to be tossed out, not consumed. See what I'm saying here?
   I feel the need to remind people that while it is very green and eco-friendly to bring your lunch to work, some things you bring might be a bit more aromatic than your co-workers are used to. For instance, back when I worked at Indymac there were three ladies on the fourth floor – where my desk was - who used to bring their lunch all the time, they'd microwave their meals and chat for an hour. It was a good team-building exercise and kept their monthly bills under control. The only problem was they brought fish and cabbage every day. Each of them. Every. Day. And they'd nuke it for waaaaaay too long so the ammonia stink would permeate the entire floor. There's nothing like leaving to enjoy your own lunch and returning to an eye-watering stench that clings to the paint and seeps into the carpet.
   That was probably the worst, but there have been some pretty bad smells coming from various lunch rooms I've been around. And usually people are too polite – or too afraid of HR – to let their colleagues know just how repulsive and disgusting some of their food smells. So, to help co-workers across the country through this challenge, I've made a brief list of things you should never bring to a small, closed-in lunch room. Think of this as a gift from me to you.

   Stinky fish. Or stinky anything from the sea. Especially fish heads and re-heated shrimp.
Cabbage.
   Runny, smelly cheese. You might think it smells good, but after an hour or two in the trash the rinds start reeking.
Broccolli - mostly because I really hate broccoli, it doesn't particularly smell
   Anything homemade with liquid smoke. It just smells like you burned your house down.
Lutefisk. This goes with the fish prohibition above, but it's so processed it's not even really food any more. And it's got a special... funk all its own.
   Anything with too much garlic, which is defined as garlic you can smell through the paper bag.

Also, don't pop microwave popcorn and walk out of the kitchen. It always burns, and more than once has meant a fire drill for everyone else. You know who you are, dumb ass.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

House In Order?

Some people I know, women mostly, have in mind exactly what they're looking for in a house: square footage, paint colors inside and out, two-story or one, decorating concepts, kinds of towels for the bathroom, number of bedrooms, all that stuff. This does not mean they're actually living in that dream home, but they do have a very definite picture in their minds.
   I don't have a vision of a home. Never have. For years now as far as I've been concerned I just needed a roof over my head, three hots and a cot. Anything else was just luxury.
   Back when I took a lot of art classes in high school and college we did create some floorplans, the idea was to teach us basic drafting and control to go with the crazy abandon art students arrive with. I came up with blue-sky kid stuff kinds of things, like a volcano secret lair with a firepole like Batman had and access to a subterranean river like the Avengers did. I also did one that resembled a beehive for some reason I can't recall now. Nothing serious. But the girls… they were on it. Sun rooms, kitchens (which I had neglected), conservatories, separate bedrooms for their three kids – they always seemed to want three kids – and huge closets and painted accent walls and swatches and samples and all that business. Jeez…
   Before now, and I mean right now, as I write this, I never saw how I suffered for that lack of vision. Nothing to strive for, as it were, no concept of where I was going. And I don't mean just with the house stuff, I mean generally, across the board. I've always known I wanted to be a published author, since I was about eight years old, but I never really had much more than a vague notion that I would write novels – maybe comic books if I was lucky - and then see my name in print. The middle bit I assumed would take care of itself (thinking just like the underpants gnomes). Same thing with getting married, having kids, leading a life of purpose, all that jazz; I knew I wanted to do those things, but I didn't really have a vision for how to accomplish them. I did all right, made a few bucks, got on TV a few times, met some nice people and went across the world. But I haven't yet mastered the things that really matter, or at least that I think should really matter.
   I know I'm not unique in this, most people in the world are just trying to get by day to day. But that doesn't mean that I have to join in with them. Goals with no plan are just dreams, after all. It takes a fair bit of planning and execution to bring about the things you want to see in your world.
   So here's the deal: at risk of sounding like a bad self-help infomercial, I'm going to start putting some effort into planning out how I'm going to achieve what I want. Trouble is, I haven't done the best job with this so far, so I'm not really certain how to start. I'll figure it out. I hope.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Dude Abides

My friend Marna had to send her dog Tex to the great dog bed in the sky today. I read her memorial blog at work and immediately started to cry. I'm still am, kind of. I knew it was coming, Marna told me he was sick and not going to get any better, but that doesn't make hearing the news any easier.
   Marna fostered Tex, then fell in love with him and gave him his forever home. He was an older dog, but because he had white fur no one was ever really certain how old. Marna had two and half years with Tex, giving him a loving home and comfort in his dotage, just what a wise old man like Tex deserved. Sometimes I called him the Dude, after the main character in The Big Lebowski, because he was so mellow and easygoing. And when his sickness took the enjoyment of life from him, Marna had the courage to see him off with dignity.
   When you get a moment, read her tribute to him.

So long, buddy.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Jerry's Kids

Did you know the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon has been going for 45 years? I didn't either. Man... that's a long time. That's long enough to see eight Presidents, several energy crises, a few recessions, lots of military 'actions,' a moon landing and NASA's abandonment of that achievement, the construction and destruction of the World Trade Center, and the gradual replacement of the American family farm with big agribusiness. A long time.
   It's been on long enough that people take it for granted. Or ignore it. For my money, it hasn't been the same since Ed McMahon's been gone. I grew up listening to him calling out 'roll the timpani!' and pointing at the old analog number board. I remember it was a great big deal when they made it to $1 million. As the 24 hours progressed, Jerry went from the movie Jerry - wacky and loud and funny - to the fatigued, punchy, angry Jerry, who would look into the camera and dare you not to pledge a dollar. I always thought he would come to my house and shake me down if I didn't give any money. Good times, good times...
   I got to thinking, what else has been around for at least 45 years? No TV shows, except the nightly news. McDonald's, I suppose. IBM. The Rolling Stones. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower, of all people, warned us of. Chevy. Ford. Wal-Mart.
   Do you see how the things I can think of are large corporations, or things made possible by those corporations? That frightens me. The only permanent things are faceless entities run by anonymous bean-counters.
   Help me out here. There has to be something that's persisted for 45 years that isn't bound by corporations. Something pure and good and unstained by association with money-grubbing bastards. Right? Anybody got any ideas?

This is what I wrote last year on Labor Day. It still stands.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Let's Think About This

Here's a good topic for a lazy Sunday. Get your thinking caps on.
   Does omnipotence necessitate omniscience?
   If you think about it the other way around, just knowing everything (omniscience) does not in any way mean you have power over everything (omnipotence). Just like me knowing how photosynthesis works doesn't mean I can make it happen. Or to take it a step further, if Santa knows if you've been bad or good that doesn't mean that he's in any position to influence your choice between the two. If he were so inclined, which I presume he is not.
   However - if you're omnipotent, all-powerful with both the ability and the desire to manipulate the universe to suit yourself, does that mean you'd need to be omniscient to make your omnipotence work? How could you influence sub-atomic reactions if you didn't know everything about them before they happened? Or if you wanted to make galaxies collide, could you do that without a thorough understanding of celestial mechanics? And if you wanted to make two people fall in love... well, that would be a pretty tall order.
   You could say that I don't need to know everything about friction, resistance, force, mass and acceleration to throw a football, but, actually, I kind of do. It might be better to say that I don't need to know how my circulatory system works to have my heart keep beating. But if you're going to take that kind of approach to omnipotence - that being all-powerful doesn't mean you know about every little thing you have power over - doesn't that imply that you're not all-powerful? My heart beats no matter what I have to say about it, which means, de facto, I do not control it.
   So what's the big deal? This has theological implications, not the least of which is the concept of free will. If you accept the idea of an omnipotent God, and if you further suppose that omnipotence necessitates omniscience, does that mean God not only knows everything you're going to do, but has used his omnipotence to ensure you do it? Where's free will then? What's to keep me from robbing, stealing, and murdering all I want if some bearded guy in the clouds not only already knows about it, but has actually ordained that I do so.
   Got your mind twisted up enough yet? And you thought this was going to be something funny, didn't you?

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Looking For Karma

I am, among other things, a professional actor. 'Professional' meaning that, unlike most actors in Hollywood, I've been paid - and quite a bit, actually, even if it wasn't a living wage. My tour-de-force was as Mold for Lennox Air Conditioners. I auditioned for Humidity, but evidently I reminded them more of Mold. I'd link to the truly amazing work I did, but it looks like Lennox has finally retired the clips.
   Since that gig paying jobs have been few and far between, although I did re-up on Mold twice, so that was money for nothing, which ain't bad. Like most actors, I'm always looking for paying work. I found a great opportunity, and I am officially asking for your help getting an audition.
   The gig is as the host of National Geographic's Known Universe. Since I'm a complete science nerd, this would be my dream job. Really. I always thought that Alan Alda's job on Scientific American Frontiers would be the ultimate, but he already booked the gig and he wasn't going to give it up, not for the likes of me. But I saw this hosting job posted yesterday and put myself in for it. All I have to do now is distinguish myself from the thousands of other actors who would love to have a regular gig like this too.
   Which is where you guys come in. I need all your good wishes and positive vibes that I get an audition, and then that I book the gig. Think 'sparkle fingers' or good mojo or healthy karma or prayers or quantum fluctuations, whatever you call it, sent my way.
   When I book the gig I'll give all of you credit for making it happen.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned that when I eventually do encounter my evil twin - and believe me, it's bound to happen some day - he's not going to be nearly evil enough.
   They say everybody in the world has an exact double, and if watching hours of classic Star Trek and the occasional soap opera has taught me anything it's that evil twins abound. My mother insists that I was alone in the womb, but I have a feeling she's been holding out on me. Would you let your favorite child know he was one half of a cliche'd trope? Yeah, I wouldn't either.
   So let's say I'm on a rainy Paris street, or chasing bad guys through a seedy, neon-lit Tokyo alleyway, or on a quest for lost documents in the secret hallways that riddle Washington, DC - you know, situations with the highest odds of encountering your evil twin - and there he is. Me, only with a goatee. Unless I have one at the time, then me without a goatee. And he's cackling evilly, as evil twins do, and going on and on about how he's going to destroy me or take over the world, or both, and then a crack shows in his evil facade. Like his zipper is down. Or his evil goatee starts to peel off his chin because he didn't use enough glue. Maybe he has a lisp that's just comical instead of sinister, something like that. Sure would make it hard to take him seriously.
   I'd listen politely, and if he had a gun I'd certainly do whatever he demanded (within reason), but my heart just wouldn't be in it. And if he had a lisp I'd probably have a hard time not laughing at him. 'It's not you,' I'd have to insist while he tried to explain* his terrible, doomed-to-failure plan talking like a three-year-old.
   I mean, really, if you're stuck with an evil twin wouldn't you want him to be good at it?
   I want my evil twin to be one step away from complete world domination. One step because then I'd be the one to deny him success and we'd end up being the mortal enemies that evil twins should be. With my luck he'd be one step away from sweeping up at a movie theater - an evil movie theater, of course - and if I did anything to keep him from it I'd just be kicking the poor guy when he's down.
   So I'd be kind of nice to him, the way you're nice to relatives you don't really know, and he'd totally misinterpret that as genuine interest. And then he'd try to invite me to lunch, and I'd have to think of a creative excuse as to why that wouldn't work. Like maybe I stopped eating, just gave it up for some reason. Then he'd want my e-mail address or my cell number, and I'd think about giving him the wrong number but I'd get flustered and give him the real one and then I'd have to dodge his calls for weeks while he called 'to chat' or 'see what my bro is up to.' And if I answered the phone he'd just go on and on about how nobody wanted to be his henchman or listen to him explain his evil schemes, and I was the only one who really cared when in actuality I really wouldn't care. Not at all.
   I just don't want to be disappointed.

*Evil twins are obligated to explain their plans to the good twin, it's in the Constitution, I'm pretty sure. Somewhere towards the back.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Lightweight

I am, without a doubt, much more fit and healthy than I was, say, eight years ago. I moved out to California and gained a lot of weight. A lot. I was running from something or running to something, but the end result was I spent way too much time on my ass in my apartment. Alone. Eating. Now I'm fifty pounds lighter with way more muscle and I can climb the stairs without getting winded.*
   But I am slowly feeling the grind of the wheels of time.
   You know how I know I'm getting older? It's not the more visible gray strands in my hair or beard, or the lines at the corners of my eyes. It's not the slightly bulgy vein on my calf or the occasional gray chest hair - which I pluck out when I find it. No, it's a more depressing, obvious sign.
   I can't eat nearly as much as I used to.
   I'm not talking about my teenage years, when every boy is a human garbage can, or even my early twenties, which is just the teen years with permission to drink alcohol. No, I mean my late twenties, when I could still pack it away and yet I was old enough to know good food from bad. Cheap-ass prime rib at the run-down casino across from Cesars Palace? No thank you, I'll have plate after plate of Spanish tapas for free at a happy hour.
   Man, I used to be able to eat. Which was, of course, part of my big-fat-sucker problem eight years ago. But now not only am I not able to eat as much at one sitting, I'm just not inclined to either. I used to want to at least sample everything at a pot luck dinner. Now I just want my salad and some meat and cheese. maybe a little of that Jell-o ring with fruit and I'm finished. Time was when we would go to a Vegas buffet the idea was to double your money: if you paid ten dollars to get in you had to eat at least twenty dollars worth of food. Wholesale, not retail. Now I don't even want to go near the buffet, couldn't care less.
   It's insidious, this getting older. It takes what used to be a defining characteristic and turns it into a liability. Which, in this case, ain't so bad a thing. I don't need to eat like that any more, and I'm glad I don't.
   But still...


* which is good because the elevator STILL isn't fixed